Autoexílio e pátria literária em Los Eunucos Inmortales de Oswaldo Reynoso

Abstract

This paper discusses the reflexes of self-exile in the book Los Eunucos Inmortales (1995) written by Peruvian author Oswaldo Reynoso. Considering the hypothesis defended by Torres (2016) that Reynoso’s prose, after exile, can be read from a second creative wave, characterized by the poetic language aimed at the discovery of identity, three novel innovations were analyzed: parallelism between Lima and Beijing; the construction of the foreigner’s image; the anthropological bias adopted to think of homeland and identity. If Reynoso previously sought freedom from a visceral criticism of capitalism, now the object of his vital search, triggered after the frustration of the Maoist regime, changes. For the narrator, freedom, now understood as happiness, comes to be found in literature and not in reality, which leads him to propose that his national identification is no longer aligned with the geographical homeland, but with the literary homeland.